Tommy and Grizel

Tommy and Grizel is the follow up to Sentimental Tommy, considered one of his most revealing and outstanding prose works. The two books are thought to have a Peter Pan quality to them. The book begins: O. P. Pym, the colossal Pym, that vast and rolling figure, who never knew what he was to write about until he dipped grandly, an author in such demand that on the foggy evening which starts our story his publishers have had his boots removed lest he slip thoughtlessly round the corner before his work is done, as was the great man's way-shall we begin with him or with Tommy, who has just arrived in London carrying his little box and leading a lady by the hand? It was Pym, as we are about to see, who in the beginning held Tommy up to the public gaze, Pym who first noticed his remarkable indifference to female society, Pym who gave him-But, alack, does no one remember Pym for himself; is the king of the Penny Number already no more than a button that once upon a time kept Tommy's person together? And we are at the night when they first met Let us hasten into Marylebone, before little Tommy arrives and Pym is swallowed like an oyster.